During a chase Jerry accidentally falls into a bottle of invisible ink, rendering him invisible, too. In this condition he gives Tom a hard time.

The invisible mouse is wonderfully animated, especially in the scenes where Jerry’s presence is only suggested by forces on pillows and clothes. However, it suffers from an all too powerful Jerry. Tom doesn’t stand a chance against his invisible opponent, making him pitiful rather than a comical foe. The soundtrack, with its surprisingly low amount of sound effects, doesn’t help, but the main problem lies in the invisibility itself, for the Donald Duck short ‘The Vanishing Private‘ (1942), using the same idea, leads to an equally unfunny cartoon.

3 comments

I am sorry to say, but I prefer “The Invisible Mouse” to “The Vanishing Duck” because it is a lot more hilarious and was made in the ’40s, and so it has a lot more beautifully-painted and realistic backgrounds and a lot better animation and was made in MGM animation’s heyday. What I have recognised about MGM’s work in the mid-to-late ’50s is that they made their works in CinemaScope and also the animation quality and the quality of the painted backgrounds in their works went lower in my opinion (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s Tom and Jerry cartoons and especially Michael Lah’s Droopy cartoons). Something I can praise about “The Vanishing Duck” though is that at least Tom wins at the end.